MEXICO CITY (AP) – Mexico posted its highest one-day total of new confirmed coronavirus cases on Wednesday, with 27,944, and a near-record number of 1,623 deaths from COVID-19 in the same period.
The new figures bring the national total to just over 1.8 million cases and 153,639 deaths. However, Mexico has an extremely low rate of testing, and projections suggest that the actual death toll exceeds 195,000.
A group made up of more than a dozen of the country’s leading universities and medical institutes also recommended on Wednesday that the use of masks become mandatory in Mexico, a measure that President Andrés Manuel López Obrador and his colleagues have long opposed. advisers.
The president himself rarely wears a mask, and over the weekend he tested positive for COVID-19.
His main adviser for the pandemic, Undersecretary of Health Hugo López-Gatell, said that the 67-year-old president “fortunately continues to evolve positively” and is active. “He’s had a few short, small episodes of low-grade fever,” he added.
“When asked repeatedly, he finally concedes and says: ‘well, a bit of a headache, since you insist so much,'” said the official.
When the pandemic began, López-Gatell said that the masks provided little protection to whoever wears them and expressed his rejection of establishing norms requiring their use. However, according to an expert report, they should be mandatory to stop the spread of the coronavirus.
Hospitals are so crowded in some parts of Mexico that many families have to care for their relatives at home and need oxygen tanks to do so. However, federal authorities reported on Wednesday that there have been 14 thefts of tanks of that gas in hospitals, delivery vehicles or in other parts of the country.
There have also been cases of scams in which people offer oxygen cylinders or concentrators for sale, accept the deposits and keep the money without giving anything.
The Ministry of Security and Citizen Protection said that eight people were arrested for robberies or scams of this type.
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